How To Measure Anything With An A4 Paper And Your Android Phone

Before smartphones were a thing it was always a good idea to keep a pen and some paper in your pocket so you could write down something important if needed. Smartphones have pretty much eliminated this need and not just because they come with great note taking apps but because the camera lets us snap a sharp image of any information we need to save. Apps like Google Keep can detect text in an image and turn it into a note for you. TakeMeasure is a free Android app that turns your camera into a measuring tool provided you have an A4 paper available. The app has you place the object you want to measure next to the A4 paper and photograph them together. It then finds the size of the object relative to the A4 paper.

Install TakeMeasure and allow it to connect to your camera. Place the object you want to measure and the A4 paper side by side on a flat surface. Open TakeMeasure and snap a photo of the two items placed next to each other. Alternatively, if you’ve got an image in your camera roll you can use that.

After taking the picture, you will need to help the app identify the A4 paper’s dimensions. Drag the large circles out so that the lines they control align with the paper in the image. The circles correspond to corners that you must snap to the corners of the paper. When you’re done, tap the Check Mark button at the bottom left. You will now see two large circles that move the ends of a line appear on the image. Position them from one end to the other of the object you want to measure and it will give you it’s length in inches.

The app is fairly accurate. We won’t recommend using it to measure things where precise measurements are needed but you can use it when the stakes aren’t high.

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The app lets you change the relative measuring object from an A4 paper to a US Letter Sheet or dollar notes of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 denominations. To change the object, tap ‘US Letter Sheet’ at the bottom of the app’s screen. You can change the measuring units from inches to millimeters, centimeters, meters, or feet from the app’s settings.

Apart from making this an easy to use tool in the office, the fact that it supports currency notes means you can use it when you’re on the go. The currency note measure does limit it so that it’s only useful to residents of the US but the feature is nevertheless neat.